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Just in case you didn’t know it, ordering food to be delivered to your  home has exploded in the past few years.  More and more customers are  going online and placing orders for food that they expect to show up at  their home quickly. For the product managers who are working at the  restaurants that are providing all of this food, times have been tough.  As the number of orders has been increasing, the restaurant’s ability to  create and ship that much food has been strained. What the product managers need is more kitchen space.  They are starting to think that they may have found a new place to build more of what they need. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

In order to be a successful product manager, often we will have to use our product development definition to find partners for our company to work with.   Once we’ve entered into an agreement with them, in order for our  product to be a success, both partners have to do their part. This is  all fine and good until the day that you discover that your partner has gone bankrupt. If that happens, what does it mean for your partnership?  What does it mean for your partner? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

When you want to get a cup of coffee, where do you go? In the U.S., most  of us generally head to a Starbucks.  It turns out that if we were in  China, this is also something that we can do – Starbucks has expanded  until they are just about everywhere in China. However, as Starbucks has  become more and more successful, other firms have seen this and have  decided that they want to start to offer coffee in China. The Starbucks  product managers are now starting to face more competition for business in China than they have ever experienced before.  What should they do with their product development definition now? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

If you were the product manager for a new social media app, what would  your #1 goal be every day when you went to work?  There is only one  answer to that question: to sign up more users for you app. Social media is all about growth. There are a number of new social media apps that are being created by  Chinese companies (who else would know about what appeals to millions of  people?) and they think that they may have found an untapped market.   The product managers for these Chinese companies are going after users in India where there are millions of people just waiting to discover the next big social media app. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

You would think that if you were a product manager at one of the world’s  largest retail companies, getting into a new line of business would not  be all that hard to do.  I mean your company has deep pockets and can  probably spend a lot of money to do whatever everyone else in this new  market is doing. The result isn’t if you are going to be successful,  it’s really more a question of just how successful you are going to be.   As Walmart has gotten into the home grocery delivery business, their  product managers have discovered that even being big may not be enough to ensure that they will be a success. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

You would think that being a burger product manager would be a fairly  simple job: you get the burger, you make the burger, you sell the  burger.  However, once upon a time it might have been that simple;  however, these days it has become much more complicated. If you can  ignore for a moment the fact that you are facing a great deal of  competition, it now turns out that your customer’s tastes are changing.   Burger product managers have a challenge on their hands and they are  going to have to get creative and change their product development  definition. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

Advertising product managers are always looking for the next “big  thing”.  The advertising market has its ups and downs as customer’s  needs, wants, and moods change seemingly overnight. These product  managers have the responsibility to keep their eyes open all the time  searching for the new ways that they can expand their product  development definition and help the firms that manufacture goods get their message in front of their next customer.   Right now what these product managers are doing is turning their attention to what they hope will be the next new engine of growth for  the industry: direct-to-consumer marketers. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

The product managers at Facebook are facing a serious challenge.  They  have to find ways to expand their product development definition and  make Facebook more interesting and relevant to their visitors. One great  way to make this happen is to provide Facebook visitors with access to current news.  This is easy to do on the national and international scale – there are a  lot of sources of that news.  However, what the product managers are  discovering is that getting local news can be a really tough job. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

Just imagine if you were a cigarette product manager.  You are  responsible for a product that is both addictive and reviled. You’ve  been doing quite well for yourself for a very long time; however, now things are starting to change.  Young people seem to getting the message and are less likely to start  to use your products. At the same time, a new type of smoking product, vaping, has shown up and seems to be doing very well.  What is a product  manager to do? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

Anyone who has a baby can tell you that they spend a lot of time giving  their baby baths.  When they do this, they require special products –  things like baby shampoo. Surprise, surprise, it turns out that the  market for baby products is huge. One of the biggest players in this  market is a company that we have all probably heard of: Johnson & Johnson (J&J). They have been around for a very long time and providing baby products is something that they are well known for. However, lately their market share in this critical market has been decreasing.  What’s going wrong and what can J&J’s product managers do about it? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

So what’s a product manager supposed to do when your biggest product has  been discontinued?  This is the challenge that was facing the Airbus  product managers. The company had been building the massive A380  airplane that they had created in order to compete with Boeing’s 747  airplane. However, the market for that type of aircraft dried up and  went away. When this happened Airbus was left with an airplane, but no market for it.  This caused the Airbus product managers to have to change their product development definition and go back to their drawing boards and come up with a new plan.   What they needed to do was figure out how Airbus could continue to grow  and be successful when they no longer had their premier product to  offer. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

Think about your favorite non-water drink right now.  What color is it?  When you pour it into a glass, it looks the way that it should – you can  recognize it. In fact, when you drink it, it probably tastes the way  that it looks. What if all of this could be changed. What if your favorite drink suddenly became clear?  No, the taste would not be changed at all, it would just all of sudden  look like water. Would you still want it?  Some product managers are  betting that you would say yes. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

It almost goes without saying that we all know about Amazon – the book  seller who has turned into the seller of just about everything.  What you  may not know about Amazon is that they decided a while back to that they were going to enter into the lucrative video gaming market.  With the power of Amazon behind you, you’d think that there was no way  that they could ever not be successful. However, so far things have not  gone the way that the Amazon product managers had wanted it to go.  What are they going to have to do to turn their product development  definition around? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

In order to make sure that people want to buy their products, product managers have to stay on top of changes in the technology that people use to make payments.  This used to be fairly easy: once upon a time everyone used cash, then they migrated to using credit and debit cards, next came PayPal and the like. Over in China product managers are once again moving forward in the area of payments and they are making changes to their product development definition.  Chinese product managers are trying to get people to put their mobile phones away and make payments using facial recognition systems.  --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

What a wonderful time we are living in!  With the arrival of the  internet, all of sudden there is no longer a reason for any of us to  have to go out to a restaurant any more. Instead, all we have to do is  to bring up one of those online ordering applications, select what we  want, and then greet the driver when they show up at our front door.  What could be better?  Unfortunately, what product managers are starting  to discover is that the brave new world of unlimited food delivery comes with some downsides. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

If you were a product manager at Walmart’s Sam’s Club,  there is one thing that would keep you up at night: Costco.  You’d know  that your product development definition was broken because the  customers that you wanted to come into your Sam’s Club stores all too  often were heading over to shop at Costco. The people that you needed to  be shopping in your store were well-to-do shoppers who would be willing  to spend a lot at your store. However, the people that you were getting  were the Walmart customers who traditionally were seeking bargains. This is not going to look good on anyone’s product manager resume. The well-to-do shoppers were all heading over to Costco.  What’s a product manager to do? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

At the end of a long day, many people like to go home and spend the evening losing themselves in playing video games on their home entertainment systems. Games for these systems have grown  into a big business. In the past, when these people were away from  home, they couldn’t play their games. However, that is now starting to  change. Videogame product managers are starting extend their product development definition and bring more  of their complex, graphics-intense hits for consoles and high-end  computers to mobile devices.  How can game product managers be successful  doing this? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

You would think that being a product manager for a hot new start-up  beverage would be a great job, right?  Somewhat surprisingly, you’d be  wrong. It turns out that it’s fairly easy to come up with the idea for a  new beverage – it it has health benefits then it is ever easier, but it  is then hard to be a product manager that is able to figure out the  product development definition that will get your new drink beverage to  catch on. This market is littered with the remains of companies  that showed up and then just faded away.  What does a product manager  have to do in order to make their new drink product a success? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

There is no question that Amazon is a successful company.  If you were a  product manager who worked at Amazon you would be under a great deal of  pressure to find ways for the company to make more money. One way that  they would like to bring in more revenue is to start to sell high end  products.  It turns out that this is harder than it may have originally  looked to them… --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support

When you think about all of the products that product managers are  responsible for, there are a number of them that come to mind as being “difficult” products to successfully manage.   For one reason or another, these products are difficult to talk about  and therefore are difficult to market. In this category go condoms,  guns, doughnuts, and, of course, cigarettes.  However, there is a new product on the market that probably belongs in  this category but it’s so new that nobody is really sure yet.  I’m  talking about e-cigarettes and product manager’s plans to expand their product development definition and market them using social media. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jim-anderson3/support